I really wish I could confidently rate the Ghost Stories gag dub a solid 9, like I had hoped and expected, instead of a 6-7 (probably 7 since when it works it really works for me).
Was charitable and rated it a 7 in the end due to being, far as I can tell, relatively unique at least where English dubs are concerned. It was fun enough overall. The improv is decent and the one-note works somewhat better as a comedy where all of them were one-note anyway, and throwing out the plot save for the bare bones is about the only way I can see meaningfully improving something as anemic and episodic as this. Unfortunately, sometimes it goes from audacious and irreverent to outright tasteless and punching down (which only increases as they really get comfortable with it). And fittingly the anime just kinda ends, which was its own unstated joke not brought down (for me) by the self-awareness of it all.
Mostly, though, I'm left wanting a show that does right everything this show does wrong. Kids to young adults encountering and maturing through spooooooky phenomenon, and that phenomenon itself becoming commonplace or bending/playing with/etc. the boundaries, is my cup of tea. Bonus points for FRIENDSHIP because I can be a sap, and/or surprisingly horrific concepts and encounters and so on.
S a a a m e. I actually remembered it in my wiki walking and searching for similar over the course of this. Still, thanks for reminding me, I don't think I've actually put it on my MAL... Fixed.
Also, is there a way to get a larger female demographic for a series with a female lead? Often times it's been Shojo, but that's on the decline, and Shonen tends to have larger female congregations.
You don't seem very familiar with the current anime landscape. While most shows each season are inevitably either the next shounen property or late-night otaku-bait, shoujo and josei stuff has really been coming back in a big way of late. Teenage girls have always been an economic powerhouse, but with more and more girls and young women getting into "nerdy" things across the world, or better asserting themselves in those spaces, the specialist market is being forced to respond.
And over here at least, some of the best regarded series of the last few years have been female-lead series targeted primarily at female viewers. Two that immediately leap to mind are Yona of the Dawn and Snow White with the Red Hair, and I think Flying Witch also falls into this category. There are also shows which have gained quite a following on both sides of the Pacific which, while they have obvious hobbyist appeal, are pretty squarely aimed at young girls, such as Love Live! or the five zillion PreCure series.
Like, seriously, shoujo anime in decline? Maybe a decade ago, sure.
Oh, and Orange, which, while the comic was moved to a seinen magazine later in its run, has a massive following over there among both male and female readers but especially the latter.
It's also being directed for television by the guy who directed Texhnolyze. Which is a bit odd, but thank ye gods he's getting steady work.
Basically, there's this girl who gets a letter from her future self about things that she will regret if she doesn't do them differently. One of these involves a new classmate of hers, who her future self was unable to save from some horrible fate.
it's a genre. women, like how seinen is men. chihayafuru, nodame cantabile, and princess jellyfish are popular examples
Well, less a genre in the typical sense than a demographic designator. In a nutshell: Women out of high school (roughly 18-25) is josei, men of the same age is seinen, younger guys and gals are shounen and shoujo respectively, and prepubescent weans are in the kodomo category.
Watching Higurashi no Naku Koro ni. The weird contrasts are interesting. It's not entirely successful thus far, as it seems to be establishing a formula which will shift and escalate as the series continues, and of course the comedy in the lighter bits is almost self-consciously lame much of the time, but the art direction on the creepy bits is great, and now and then there is an Azumanga Daioh-quality character joke that just works—like finding Colonel Sanders.
It is also worth noting that the subtler, weirder aspects of the horror bits that play up the main character's paranoia as something sinister and volatile in itself are pretty neat. It's all well and good to have a character who feels threatened by a vague conspiracy against them, but it's much more interesting when their growing suspicion is, from an outside perspective, clearly itself part of that special plan.
It's fairly clever and quite engaging, but I feel like—and this is just me talking three or so episodes in, so I could turn out completely wrong—it suffers a little from being the first television show to go down the road of combining moe-moe aesthetics (in this case of the doinky harem comedy/slice-of-life type) with a horror/suspense undercarriage that harshly contrasts with the initial presentation. At this point, it's something of a high art in anime, and Japan already had the abunakawaii concept out there, but the way in which Higurashi combines the two, and what sorts of niches and unexpected similarities between them it tapped into in the process, was fairly novel in the medium, particularly in the mainstream. And the results are kind of rough around the edges: Teen comedies and slasher movies are both schlocky genres, so throwing the two together and seeing what happens is going to have some weird, specific issues.
But, again, I've heard that it gets better as it goes on, and stranger to boot, and it's pretty addictive thus far.
i remember seeing part of an episode in high school. people knifin the fuck out of each other but i could not stand the animation. nope. all those eyes through hair. i'm so shallow. The Tzestory
The animation is not the best, no, but it kind of just turns into background noise after a while, and the use of shading is striking enough to offset the problem in the serious scenes.
...I kinda wish I could record my immediate reactions to some of the shit that's going down in this show at this juncture, because I am genuinely taken aback at some of this. In a good way. It's like the visual equivalent to Diamanda Galás' "Wild Women with Steak Knives" up in here. Crazy shit.
there is probably tons of good seinen that I am just not aware of but the thing the word immediately brings to mind is An Inordinately High Number Of Needles or whatever that manga's called, and other such "death for death's sake" type properties.
obviously there's a lot of shit, you know how us 18-35 y.o. males are. but there's enough good stuff that seinen is why i started paying attention to publishers; the first manga magazine i cared about was the seinen Afternoon, which published/s e.g. Blame!, Makoto Shinkai stuff, Mushishi, Houseki no Kuni.
i have the transcript of the video game but i haven't read it all the way through. it's notable in that lain kind of acts like a normal person slightly
Comments
sad but true
Speaking of which, I completely forgot that was on my list until now. Huh.
me cooking
also i guess gyoza is meatloaf in a bag with more garlic. nice
What is Josei all about?
i've been told i should play umineko, too
no.
don't do this to me show.
don't hurt me like this.
well known non-sufferer of despair, makoto naegi